178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE DANGEE OF UNSKILL 



By WALTER G. BEACH 



STATE COLLEGE OF WASHINGTON, PULLMAN, WASH. 



f I i"WO human streams pour ceaselessly into the sea of American 

 -*- industry. One of these brings to us the immigrant, the man 

 of foreign stock, alien in blood and customs, and more and more from 

 the backward and " beaten " peoples of eastern Europe. The sources 

 of the other stream are in our own life, and upon it are borne America's 

 own children who, in the passing of years, are to face the duties of 

 manhood and womanhood. These two streams fill the vast national 

 reservoir of labor upon which depends in large measure the future of 

 American industry and American moral welfare. This is the first fact 

 to which attention is directed. 



The second fact is the changing character of industry, aside from its 

 human element. We are in the midst of the great mechanical revolu- 

 tion whose beginning in America goes back to the early years of the 

 nineteenth century, but which since the civil war has been uprooting 

 the old order, supplanting its simpler methods with marvelous rapidity 

 and tremendous power. 



The human consequence of this revolution is the driving out of the 

 man by the machine, on the one hand, and the increasing specialization 

 of labor on the other. And the labor supplanted by the machine, if it 

 is to fit into the resulting more specialized employments, must have 

 skill. Primitive man was unspecialized and his skill was of the 

 slightest, his knowledge being insignificant. The man of to-day finds 

 that sheer muscle is at a discount, and his weaker but better trained 

 fellow passes him in the race. It is not meant that there is not a great 

 demand for unskilled labor, but the unskilled laborer works under a 

 constantly growing handicap. 



In our earlier national history, it was possible for us to rely for 

 prosperity upon the resources of nature. Force of body and character 

 sufficient to brave the hardships of a raw and untrained world, and to 

 pluck from nature the bounties which she furnished in abundance, was 

 the quality most essential. Each man or family was a unit in produc- 

 tion ; cooperation or combination on any extended scale involving train- 

 ing, was not found or needed. Individualism and the overthrow of 

 nature, and her exploitation, were the important features of our national 

 life which assured success ; and it was just these qualities of endurance, 

 courage, force, assertiveness, aided by sheer muscle, which the selective 



